Love Saves the Day

“I couldn’t have known it that first time I saw her. But I did know it somehow, you know? How sometimes you look at someone’s face, and you don’t know what exactly it is you’re seeing, but you know it’s important. Laura thinks she has such a poker face.” He laughed again. “I know how hard she works to convince herself she’s in control of things all the time. But you can tell when she really cares about something. It’s written all over her face.” His eyes in the mirror found mine. “I saw it when she looked at you at lunch,” he said. “I don’t know, maybe you think the two of you aren’t as close as you’d like to be. Laura doesn’t talk about it much. I have an older sister. I know it can be rough between mothers and daughters sometimes. My sister loves my mother, and the two of them talk all the time. But I never see in her face what I saw in Laura’s when she looked at you.”

I had to turn my head aside and clear my throat, embarrassed for Josh to see me cry. He was silent as I pulled a tissue from my purse and blew my nose. Then in the mirror, his eyes smiled at mine.

“Let’s have one more drink,” he said. “I want to toast my mother-in-law this time.”

Last week I had chest pains so bad I had to go to the emergency room. After a battery of tests the doctors came back with their conclusions: angina. Also high blood pressure. Who knew? They say it’s unusual for a woman my age, but my father’s dying prematurely of a heart attack puts me at higher risk. Sometimes these things happen. There are all kinds of things I have to do now to manage my condition. They tell me there’s no reason why, with diet and exercise and medical care, I shouldn’t live out a normal life span.

That conversation I had with Josh keeps coming back to me. And I know, somehow, that the doctors are wrong. I don’t have much time left. I don’t mean that I feel sick. I feel fine most days. And yet, as Josh said, sometimes you know a thing when you see it.

Last night I went into my closet and went through some of the things I’d taken out of storage after Prudence had given my music back to me. I pulled out the old Love Saves the Day bag where I’d put a bunch of old newspapers and magazines and, all the way at the very bottom, the crushed metal box I’d managed to find in the wreckage of our old building. I had to struggle to open it. Old, broken things don’t like giving up their secrets too easily. Hidden in the clutter of that little box was the red collar Mr. Mandelbaum had bought for Honey on the morning of the day when our building came down. I put the collar around Prudence’s neck and told her, “Tomorrow we’ll get some tags for you that say PRUDENCE. And maybe we’ll have Sheila downstairs take a picture of the two of us together. Would you like that, little girl?” I buried my fingers in the ruff of her neck, and Prudence leaned her head against my hand and purred.

I know now what Laura knew already that day when she risked her life for Honey’s—that love is love, whether it goes on two legs or four. Someday Prudence will love Laura. Prudence will love her on those days when it seems as if nobody else does. She’ll make Laura laugh when nobody else can even make her smile. Prudence will carry my love for Laura into her new home and her new life. She’ll carry my memories back to Laura, too—memories of fourteen years of love and music and a life that was too good to be destroyed altogether, even by that one terrible day. She’ll help Laura find her way back into those memories—memories of all of us, of Honey and the Mandelbaums, who loved her also, and of days in a dusty downtown record store when nothing in the world mattered except a mother and daughter who were always happiest when they were together. She’ll take with her a love that never died, even if it did change forms.

I was meant to find Prudence that day. I know that now, and it seems as if I’ve known it always.

I’ve always known I was keeping her for Laura.

14

Laura

LAURA WAS IN A TEN-THIRTY MEETING IN CLAYTON NEWELL’S OFFICE when she got the call. There was a 250-page contract to review for one of their largest clients, and the client wanted notes by the end of the day. The matter was pressing enough that Clay himself had gotten involved.

The phone on Clay’s desk buzzed, and his assistant’s voice over the intercom said, “There’s a call for Ms. Dyen, Mr. Newell.”

“What is it regarding?” Clay asked before Laura could say anything.

“It’s her husband,” Clay’s assistant answered. “He says it’s an emergency.”

“I left my cell in my office,” Laura said. Her stomach, which had started to unknot after her fight with Josh that morning as the familiar routines of work took over, clenched again. “He wouldn’t call on this line if it wasn’t important.”